Google

[admin]

Is this the company to bring analytics to the masses? I argue that they already have but whether-or-not you agree, we should be looking at what they are doing.

[admin]

From The Australian:

Lara Sinclair | March 12, 2009

SEARCH behemoth Google is stepping into the shadowy world of behavioural targeting by tracking the interests of web users based on the sites they visit, and then serving them ads to match.

Google will today launch a beta version of what it has dubbed "interest-based advertising" -- the first major development arising from its $US3.1billion acquisition of internet ad-serving company DoubleClick last year.

As soon as a user visits a site that takes Google text or display advertising, the system uses DoubleClick technology to identify or "cookie" that browser.

Google analyses the content on the site to match the browser with up to 600 advertising categories based on the future purchases it thinks the user may make.

For example, visitors to film review sites might be served movie ads or ticket offers on other sites they visit in Google's publisher network.

The launch is likely to reignite the debate over potential privacy violations that surrounded Google's acquisition of DoubleClick.

Three in four internet users worldwide could be targeted with interest-based advertising when they visit the hundreds of thousands of publishers, bloggers and social networking sites -- including YouTube and MySpace -- that take Google ads.

In a TNS Global poll last year, 57 per cent of respondents said they were worried about advertisers using their web surfing history to serve them relevant ads.

But Google product management director Brad Bender said the system -- which does not identify individual users by name, by Google account or by the topics they search for on Google -- was designed to show people more relevant advertising.

Users will also be able to view and edit the advertising categories to which they are linked, or opt out of the system altogether. Mr Bender said advertisers and publishers would benefit because users were more likely to click on those ads.

Google claims it will not link people with sensitive information such as race, religion, sexual orientation, health categories or "sensitive financial categories".

But some of the advertising categories included cover potentially sensitive topics such as weight loss, credit cards and debt management, and dating.

The system is expected to be rolled out in Australia later this year.

[Doug Heywood]

By Juan Carlos Perez June 2, 2009 12:53 PM ET

IDG News Service - Google Inc. today unveiled a new high-end Google Search Appliance (GSA) with a revamped software architecture designed to lift its indexing capacity to billions of documents.

The new appliance, the GB-9009, can index up to 30 million documents, according to Google. Its minimum capacity is 15 million documents.

Google sells the Search Appliance as a hardware box bundled with enterprise search software designed to let companies index and retrieve data stored in their corporate systems, such as applications, document management tools, databases, Web servers and files. The upgraded Version 6.0 of the GSA software is based technology the company uses in its Web search engines, including Google.com.

In an enterprise search market historically dominated by sophisticated products that are costly and difficult to implement and use, Google in the past has tried to compete with an aggressively priced, low- to mid-range product designed to be simple to install, maintain and use.

However, with the new architecture and capacity to scale up to billions of indexed documents, the GB-9009 Search Appliance appears to give Google its most serious chance to compete for customers looking for industrial strength enterprise search products.

The GB-9009 replaces the GB-8008, which, had to be hard-wired and pre-configured on 12 server nodes to provide the capacity of the new system, said Nitin Mangtani, senior product manager of enterprise search at Google.

The GB-9009 appliance is based on Dell's PowerEdge R710 rack server platform, which runs Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors. Unlike the predecessor single-box Search Appliance models, the GB-9009 has two units: one for processing and one for storage.

Google is also phasing out the entry-level GB-1001, which topped out at 3 million documents but could be stacked in configurations of either five or eight units, providing capacity for up to 10 million or 30 million documents, respectively.

Google will continue to support the GB-1001 and GB-8008 models.

Thanks to the new more flexible architecture, IT departments can mix and match GB-7007 appliances, which will continue to be sold, and the GB-9009 based on their capacity needs. The devices can be linked even if they're not in the same physical location.

The new 6.0 software also adds more options for IT managers to customize administration, security and search relevancy features.

In addition, GSA 6.0 provides end users with social search capabilities, such as the ability for them to add results.

While the Search Appliance's functionality still isn't as sophisticated as that of high-end products from Autonomy and Microsoft's Fast Search, it has now moved upstream, said IDC analyst Susan Feldman. "The Search Appliance is no longer as much of a black box," she said.

The new search appliance is priced from $30,000.